hen you look at human
life carefully, you will find out
how important it is to become a trustworthy person.

The American soldiers came and proved not to be devils. The Japanese
forces were allowed to disarm themselves, and the Japanese civil
authorities were given the power to administer the nation under the
watchful eye of GHQ, General Headquarters, the American army of
occupation.

But there was a new war: the enemy now was starvation. Food was scarcer
than ever, and the harvest had been poor. Temple life was just as hard as
in the days of Haibutsu Kishaku, the nineteenth-century persecution of the
Buddhists, except now everyone suffered.

One morning a neighbor came to Rinso-in to help out in the kitchen.
Shunryu brought in some vegetables from the garden, and there was seaweed
and miso for soup, but when the woman opened

the large temple rice box she gasped. It was empty. Her family didn't
have much either, but she ran down the hill, took half of what they had,
and gave it to the temple. Soon all the neighbors and members of Rinso-in
heard that the temple was in need, and the rice box filled up.

The homeless, the jobless, and the hungry were wandering the roads, and
some found their way to Rinso-in. Shunryu would see them coming and tell
Chie, "Look after them." She would share what they had—cooked
rice, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers—and admonish them to go find
work and take care of themselves. Just as Chie was giving it away, some
old woman with a bag of rice would come down the mountainside to make an
offering to the temple. The temple rice box had a life of its own.

As he walked to Rinso-in, Taro Kato collected locusts and strung them
together with needle and thread. At Rinso-in he cooked them with soy
sauce. He had been living in the temple quite a bit since his Manchurian
dream had been crushed. He had held on to hope for a while, and had even
sent his belongings ahead. He figured they had reached Hiroshima when the
bomb dropped. His parents, seeing him dejected and directionless, had sent
him to be with Shunryu.

Taro suggested that his father could easily get Shunryu a government
job, which would provide money to buy food and to pay off some of the
temple's debts. But Shunryu would not consider such a thing. A number of
priests were working to support their temples and families, going off in
Western suits and shined shoes, but not he. He was testing Dogen's
teaching. Dogen had said that when we are supported firmly from within,
external support follows. Every morning in Soto temples a priest chanted a
brief dedication that included the line, "May the two wheels of the
temple gate turn smoothly forever." The two wheels of the temple are
the dharma wheel and the economic wheel. Dogen said that the former turned
the latter, so if the temple went broke or the people starved, it would
likely be because their dharma was weak.

Ever since I first knew the world of Dogen-zenji, I tested my belief
that if I observed the Buddhist way faithfully, I would be supported. This
was true during and especially after the war, when there was not enough to
eat.

Japan and Dogen's hypothesis got a nudge of support from America when
shiploads of food started to arrive at the docks, feeding the faithless
and faithful alike. Among the foodstuffs were powdered milk, which was a
curious drink, and hard dried fruit. Chie encouraged her children to eat
this strange food by telling them things like, "Prunes make you
beautiful."

Chie was nursing the last of their children, a son named Otohiro, and
she nursed a neighbor's baby as well. It was Yasuko's job to go get the
other baby several times a day from the milkless mother and bring it home.
People would tell her on the way what a wonderful, generous woman her
mother was.

So the early days of the occupation passed, and the nation was grateful
to the victors for their magnanimity. People weren't being rounded up and
shot, they had their emperor and their own government, there were
shiploads of food, and, in general, the militarists had been exposed for
their great lies and barbarism. Indeed, the whole world had been turned
upside down: everything was the opposite of what they'd been taught for
decades.

In Tokyo at least five members of the High Grass Mountain Group were
now working with the new government. Masao Nishinakama was involved in
negotiations with the Americans and was said to have pushed successfully
to see that Japan was not required to pay reparations to countries it had
occupied and fought with. Others, including Masao's little brother Shigeo,
were involved in economic planning and national policy making.

Shunryu was deeply committed to the reinvigoration of a wounded Japan,
not only through Buddhism but also by general education. He still had the
certificate he had received from Komazawa University to teach English and
to be an ethical guide to

youth. But there was a purge going on, and he felt in some danger of
losing his certification and being ostracized from any public duty beyond
his immediate priestly tasks. This purge was far reaching; all leaders,
teachers, and priests were being examined by GHQ and the new Japanese
authorities to determine if they had actively supported the war,
nationalism, and fascism through speaking or writing. On October 30, 1945,
they issued an Order of Investigation, Expulsion or Approval for Teachers
and Educators, and on January 4, 1946, Notification on the Expulsion of
Unfavorable Individuals from the Public Occupations.

Priests were needed to be teachers, as there was a shortage of college
graduates after the war, but they had to pass this scrutiny, and GHQ
deemed them guilty unless proven innocent. The Shinto priests were obvious
targets, and most of them were excluded, but Buddhist priests were suspect
as well. Some had been enthusiastic supporters of the military, some had
become officers, and others had gone on lecture tours promoting
militaristic imperial Buddhism. All religious institutions, including
Christian ones, had supported the military. The official policy of both
Soto and Rinzai Zen had been to subordinate Buddhism to the war effort.

Shunryu knew he had several possible strikes against him. One was that
his temple had housed military personnel and Korean slave labor. Another
was that before the Pacific war he had, for one day, headed that new
organization to promote public support for government policies. The third
strike was his trip to occupied Manchuria, which could be seen as
participation in Japan's imperialism. In his favor, there was sympathy now
for those who spoke and taught English. He hadn't worn the military-style
uniform of the day. There were the meetings he'd held. And he had saved a
stack of papers at Rinso-in that documented his lack of support for the
madness.

Suetsune-san of the High Grass Mountain Group showed up at Rinso-in one
day to find Shunryu laboring over a questionnaire from GHQ. Suetsune's
English was good, and they stayed up all

night working on it. On another occasion Shunryu had to go see Japanese
authorities in Shizuoka; he brought his papers to that meeting as well.

The purge did not turn into a mindless witch-hunt; reason seemed to be
prevailing. All Japanese had cooperated with the war effort whether they
wanted to or not. Practically every noncombatant, including women, had
gone to evening meetings where they'd practiced lunging with pointed
bamboo spears, preparing to kill the paratroopers as they landed and
charge the invaders on the beaches. Officers at GHQ knew the situation was
complex, and they left most of the nuts and bolts of the purge to the
Japanese authorities. They were just looking for those who had been vocal
and committed, and Shunryu definitely did not fit that description. But
more than eighty-three thousand people were subject to the purge through
the summer of 1952.

I was not purged after the world war. I had no record of supporting the
military. And I had many printed documents expressing my feelings, many
papers suggesting what our policies should be, what kind of danger the
nation was in. Most of this may be difficult for Americans to understand.
I didn't say anything about war. I said that if we neglected to understand
Japan's situation clearly, if we based our understanding merely on what
was broadcast or printed, then we would lose the real picture of Japan.

I cared more about the fundamental way of thinking that causes war.
That is why I didn't like the nationalists in Japan. Their view was very
one-sided and unrealistic. They brought accusations against others without
knowing what they were doing. They created tremendous problems. So I put
the emphasis on studying what was actually happening in the country, in
the army, and in the political world.

W

herever you go, if you
have a flexible attitude
you can help people quite easily.

On December 31, 1945, the temple was buzzing with enthusiastic
preparation for the New Year. Tori's family was back in Tokyo. Chie's
mother, Kinu Muramatsu, had moved in, and she, her daughter, and a group
of danka wives were making the best meal they could come up with. In the
buddha hall, cards were passed out for people to chant a chapter of the PrajnaParamita Sutra. All night mochi was pounded, sake was sipped, and
songs were sung. All week long they had cleaned the temple and thrown away
what was worn out and not of use—Miss Ransom's chair, which the children
had jumped on till it was beyond repair, old newspapers, magazines, and
some offensive wartime books.

It was a time to pay debts, and with the help of the danka the family
paid off what they could. They decorated and made offerings at the altar.
This was New Year celebrated as it hadn't been for a long time. People
were still depressed from the war, but Shunryu felt this week of
rejuvenation would help lift them up together.

We fool ourselves in some way and enjoy the last day of the year. This
is based on the Buddhist way of understanding life. Moment after moment we
should renew our life, we should not stick to old ideas of what life is,
or what our way of life is. Especially at the end of the year we should
completely renew our feelings and completely clean even our cars. If we
always stick to old ideas and always repeat the same thing over and over
again, then we are confined in our old way of life. Some excitement or
some occasion is necessary to encourage us along.

In 1946 Shunryu established the Takakusa-juku, a study group for young
men and women in their late teens and early twenties. It was considered to
be part of the New-Life-after-the-War-Movement. Local townsfolk and
families from Shizuoka and Tokyo also

sent their youth to Rinso-in. They sat zazen and chanted, Shunryu gave
talks, and there were discussions. Taro Kato attended. Shunryu didn't have
to censor himself anymore, but he was still not an absolutist. "This
may be right, but this may also be wrong," he would say. A neighbor,
twelve-year-old Masao Yamamura, too young to attend, would hide outside
the shoji and listen to the exciting new ideas being discussed. He heard
Shunryu say passionately that the war had been a big mistake and that
people should open their eyes to the world.

Now what Shunryu said was in harmony with the mood of the nation and
even with GHQ. MacArthur himself said that war could only be eliminated
with a spiritual awakening. Many Japanese felt a deep shame for the course
their people had followed and vowed that their nation would never again
resort to force except in self-defense. Indeed, it would be written into
their new constitution. Shunryu noticed that since they had lost the war
the Japanese people had dropped a great deal of their national arrogance
and had more of a sense of the contradictions within their own culture.
Many felt they had lost their way, but to Shunryu the new humility and
insecurity were better. Now they were more skeptical and sensed, at least
theoretically, the emptiness of all existence. They saw that their
traditions were always changing and not set in stone.